《经济学人》双语：Digital twins数字镜像可以应用于哪些生活场景？

原文标题：
The virtual world
Digital twins are fast becoming part of everyday life
Welcome to the mirror world
虚拟世界
数字孪生正迅速成为日常生活的一部分
欢迎来到镜像世界

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WHEN VISITING a doctor a few years from now, you can expect to be accompanied by a virtual version of yourself.
数年后当你去医院看病时，你或将拥有一个虚拟版的自己陪伴左右。

This so-called digital twin will be a working model of your body that can be summoned onto a physician’s computer screen.
这个所谓的“数字孪生”会是你肉身的一个数字模型，能够呈现在医生的电脑屏幕上。

Updated with your latest vital signs, it will help the doctor make an accurate diagnosis.
它会随着你最新的生命体征更新数据，这将有助于医生做出精确的诊断。

It also opens the door for medicines and procedures designed specifically for you, greatly increasing recovery rates.
同时，它也会为你量身定制药物和手术方案开辟道路，会大大提高康复率。

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This might seem like fantasy, but the foundations are being laid.
虽然看似天马行空，但相关基础在逐步建立。

Researchers at Queen Mary University of London already use computer simulations of the hearts of individual patients to evaluate different treatments for atrial fibrillation, a common disorder.
伦敦玛丽女王大学的研究人员已经利用计算机模拟病人的心脏，来评估心房颤动这种常见疾病的不同治疗方案。

It would be far too risky to experiment this way on someone’s real heart.
在病人的真实心脏上做实验风险太大。

With other organs also being twinned by scientists, it seems likely they will eventually link up to form a virtual body.
在科学家的努力下，其他器官也正被生成“镜像图像”，未来它们可能会相互连接，形成一个完整的虚拟身体。

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Digital twins are starting to pop up everywhere.
数字孪生技术随处可见。

Among other things, they monitor the health of jet engines on airliners, keep track of Uber’s network of vehicles and replicate Amazon’s extensive supply chain well enough for the online retailer to accurately forecast sales several years ahead.
除了其他应用外，数字孪生技术还能监测客机喷气发动机的运行状况、跟踪优步的车辆网络、复制亚马逊庞大的供应链，以便让这家在线零售商能够准确预测未来几年的销售情况。

They are helping local authorities respond to the effects of flooding and letting carmakers shave years off the development of new models by simulating test drives and crashes.
数字孪生技术正在帮助地方政府应对洪水影响、通过模拟试驾和碰撞测试，让汽车制造商在开发新车型时节省数年时间。

Twins are also being developed to help manage factories, companies and entire cities.
数字孪生还被用于工厂管理、企业管理和整个城市的管理。
 
All this is being turbo-charged by recent progress in artificial intelligence (AI), which gives twins the ability to make predictions about their physical counterparts, and fine-tune themselves on new data.
这一切的背后，都离不开人工智能（AI）的飞速发展，AI赋予了数字孪生技术预测其实体对应物的能力，并根据新数据对自身进行微调。

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Digital twins began as basic computer models of physical objects and systems. As computers have become more powerful, twins have become more sophisticated.
数字孪生技术起源于对物理对象和系统的基础计算机建模。随着计算机技术的飞速发展，数字孪生技术也变得越来越复杂和精细。

Complex design and modelling software means many physical objects initially take shape in the virtual world.
现代复杂的设计和建模软件使得许多物理对象在虚拟世界中成像。

Small sensors, capable of measuring all sorts of things, feed twins with real-time data, ensuring that they mirror their physical counterparts.
同时，小型传感器技术的不断进步，能为数字孪生提供精准的实时信息，确保它能够真实反映物理对象的实际情况。

A Formula 1 racing car, for instance, may have more than 250 sensors updating its digital twin during a grand prix.
例如，一辆一级方程式赛车在大奖赛期间，可能拥有250多个传感器来更新其数字孪生。

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The use of AI takes all this much further, allowing virtual models to become more sophisticated, and to both simulate and optimise activities in the real world.
人工智能的广泛应用使得这一切迈上了新台阶，它让虚拟模型变得更加复杂，还能在现实世界中模拟和优化各种活动。

You may worry that this portends a dystopian future; Morpheus, a character in a science-fiction film from 1999 in which a sentient machine subdues humanity through pervasive virtual reality, had a name for it. As he said: “The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us.”
你可能会担忧，这是否预示着一个反乌托邦的未来，正如1999年科幻电影《黑客帝国》中的角色莫菲斯所暗示的那样。在那部电影中，一个具有意识的机器通过无处不在的虚拟现实控制了人类，莫菲斯曾有一句台词：“矩阵无处不在，它就在我们周围。”

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Reality is more prosaic. The idea of creating symbolic representations of real-world things is centuries old.
现实情况则更为平凡。千百年来，人们就有通过符号化表示来反映现实世界事物的想法。

Many ancient civilisations built architectural models, sometimes to place into tombs but also to work out how to build things.
许多古代文明都曾经制作过建筑模型，这些模型有时被放置在墓穴中，但更多时候是为了帮助人们理解和规划建筑过程。

Double-entry book-keeping, developed in the 15th century, was a paper-based representation of a merchant’s finances.
复式簿记法起源于15世纪，是一种在纸上呈现商人财务状况的方式。

The Phillips Machine, a hydraulic computer from the 1940s, created a physical “twin” of national economic flows.
到了1940年代，菲利普斯机这一液压计算机的出现，更是为人们创建了一个国家经济流动的实体“孪生体”。

Spreadsheets and supply-chain management systems enable companies to log transactions, track inventory, make forecasts and model future scenarios.
如今，电子表格和供应链管理系统等现代工具，更是让公司能够轻松记录交易、追踪库存、进行预测和模拟未来情景。

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Today’s digital twins extend this process, making it easier for humans to tackle complex problems.
当今的数字孪生技术深化了这一进程，使得人类能够更加便捷地应对复杂难题。

They can act as virtual crystal balls, allowing people to peer into the future, spot problems before they materialise and test wild ideas without real-world consequences.
它们如同虚拟的水晶球，让人们能够窥见未来，预先发现潜在问题，并尝试各种大胆的想法而不必担心现实世界的后果。

For businesses, this should mean better designs, more streamlined operations and fewer costly blunders.
对于企业而言，这意味着设计更优、运营更顺畅、错误成本更低。

For society, the promise is equally tantalising: personalised health care, cities that flow and breathe more easily and, thanks to the threats exposed by climate modelling, clues as to how the planet might avoid environmental catastrophe.
对于社会而言，这一前景同样诱人：个性化的医疗护理、交通流畅、空气更好的城市，以及通过气候模型揭示的威胁，为地球如何避免环境灾难提供了宝贵的线索。

Digital twins offer the ultimate sandbox in which castles can be built and tested before being made real.
数字孪生就像是一个完美的沙盒，人们可以在其中构建和测试各种设想，直到它们变为现实。

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Could these virtual doppelgangers go rogue? They might if they are programmed badly, or hacked into.
这些虚拟的“孪生体”是否会失控呢？如果编程不当或遭到黑客攻击，可能存在失控风险。

Avoidable medical conditions could be ignored, corporate systems sent awry and critical power plants compromised.
它们可能会忽视可避免的医疗状况，导致企业系统出错，甚至关键电力设施受到损害。

Digital twins will gobble up mountains of data, some of it wrong, some of it prejudiced and much of it raising concerns about privacy and surveillance.
数字孪生会吞噬海量数据，其中有些数据是错误的，有些数据带有偏见，还有很多数据引发了人们关于隐私和监控的担忧。

There is also the danger of tunnel vision as humans rely more and more on digital twins—and miss things that sensors might not be able to capture.
随着人类越来越依赖数字孪生技术，也会存在“短视”的危险——我们会错过传感器可能无法捕捉到的东西。

Yet these risks are not specific to digital twins. They apply to all emerging technologies, as they always have and always will.
然而，这些风险并非数字孪生所独有，而是所有新兴技术都可能面临的问题。过去如此，将来也会如此。

Such concerns need to be considered, as in the current debate over the use of AI.
正如当前关于人工智能使用的争论一样，人们需要考虑这些问题。

The emergence of the digital mirror world will doubtless raise new questions, but its potential advantages are already plain to see.
数字镜像世界的出现无疑会引发新的问题，但它的潜在优势已经显而易见。

（恭喜读完，本篇英语词汇762左右）
原文出自：2024年8月31日《TE》Leaders版块
精读笔记来源于：自由英语之路
本文翻译整理: Irene
本文编辑校对: Irene
仅供个人英语学习交流使用。

【重点句子】（3个）
Twins are also being developed to help manage factories, companies and entire cities.
数字孪生还被用于工厂管理、企业管理和整个城市的管理。

Digital twins began as basic computer models of physical objects and systems. As computers have become more powerful, twins have become more sophisticated.
数字孪生技术起源于对物理对象和系统的基础计算机建模。随着计算机技术的飞速发展，数字孪生技术也变得越来越复杂和精细。

Digital twins offer the ultimate sandbox in which castles can be built and tested before being made real.
数字孪生就像是一个完美的沙盒，人们可以在其中构建和测试各种设想，直到它们变为现实。